Jammie Wong With Hawaiian Galore Inc

Intro: [00:00:05] Broadcasting Live from the Business RadioXStudios in Oahu, Hawaii. It’s time for Oahu Business Radio.Now here’s your host

Lee Kantor: [00:00:17] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Oahu Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor facility access. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories today on the show. We have Jammie Wong and she is with Hawaiian galore. Welcome, Jamie.

Jammie Wong: [00:00:37] Thanks, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:38] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Hawaiian Glor. How are you serving, folks?

Jammie Wong: [00:00:44] So Hawaiian Galore is a consulting and coaching company that I started so that I can help businesses learn how to transform their processes within their company to improve their culture and their customer service.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:57] Now, how did you kind of stumble upon that? A lot of folks take their processes for granted. What got you into the process business?

Jammie Wong: [00:01:07] Well, I got into it recently because I’ve always been an employee and within the companies I’ve been in, I realized that there’s a lot of different things that are missing in order to help the individual employee succeed within the company. So I decided, well, I think this is something that needs to be spoken about and taught more to business owners. They need help with that so that they can help their employees win. Ultimately, the company wins.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:34] Now is there a certain areas in certain processes you work on? Like, do you work more in sales? Do you work more in just operations or customer service? Is there an area you specialize in?

Jammie Wong: [00:01:46] So actually, it’s overall right because I’ve been in every single department that you mentioned, but it initially starts with the operations part because when you first interact with the customer, whoever they get greeted by, that’s where the interaction starts. So let’s start from there and then able to work its way into each different department because ultimately every department works with your customer. So you want the customer to have a continuous and a continuous good flow of communication within the company where where one department speaks, the next one is just continuous flow. So it makes the customer happy, makes the customer service exceptional.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:23] Now do you find that a lot of business leaders, they kind of take their employees for granted and they don’t really view them as one of their customers?

Jammie Wong: [00:02:33] Yes. And I think that that is the number one customer for an employer is their employees, because if they don’t teach and train their employees how to handle customers and what needs to be done, then they’ll just wing it. And once they wing it, it gets very disruptive and it breaks up the flow. So you have a lot of unhappy customers right from the beginning, which includes the employees because no one likes an unhappy customer. They don’t know how to deal with it. So then they start passing them off.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:00] Now, if you treat your employees right, I would imagine that you have happier, better employees and it’s easier to find new ones in case you if you need more.

Jammie Wong: [00:03:11] Well, definitely because when you teach and help and train and make an employee successful, the best referral a company can get is word of mouth. And the word of mouth that’s most successful to me is by an employee because they’ll go, speak about it to the individual customers, they’ll tell about it to other people. So that is the most powerful referral is a happy employee

Lee Kantor: [00:03:32] Now is having a happy employee as simple as just, oh, pay them more because that’s all they want is more money? Or is there other things you’ve been doing to get a happy employee?

Jammie Wong: [00:03:43] Right? So to get a happy employee, you actually need to find out what it is that they want. What are their goals? What are they seeking? I mean, a lot of people might say, OK, the pay, they’ll start off with the pay. But it’s not really the p, because when you start talking and interacting with your individual employees, you find out there’s different things. So if you help them achieve their goals, then they’ll help the company achieve their goals and then it becomes a win win for everybody. So it takes a lot of communication, which is what I help business owners with because everything starts with communication.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:17] Now, so we’ve talked a little bit about how a company could kind of get the most out of their employees and, you know, that’s a great starting point. But is there other activities they can be doing when it comes to like, say, sales and marketing to kind of beef that up a little bit?

Jammie Wong: [00:04:34] Sure. I mean, there’s a lot of different things that can be taught and changed, and you can actually encourage the employees to do some of those sales do some of the marketing. So when you have customers calling in just with questions, they can start doing the sales processes there. Or, you know, you can encourage social media or like this, like a podcast or an interview, or they could be talking to other people about it and even getting referrals from the customers when the customers call in. If they have a great experience, the individual employee can do that. And what you can do ultimately right as an employer is to incentivize the employees. The departments make it more lucrative if it’s a win win, not just, you know, a bonus type structure, but more of an incentive.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:18] Now in your work, are you specializing in certain industries or niches, or is this something that any business of any size can benefit from?

Jammie Wong: [00:05:28] Well, any business can benefit from this, but my specialty is in the fact industry, so I’ve been in it in for twenty five years, so that is my little niche. But as I said, any company can benefit from, you know, transforming their processes and starting with the individual employee to help the company.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:47] Now what the say in one of these fact companies out there that are listening, what is the type of problem they’re having or challenge that they’re going through where working with you or somebody on your team would help them? Like, what’s a symptom that they might be having that you might be able to help them solve?

Jammie Wong: [00:06:05] Well, the the biggest problem that usually happens is that when the customer calls in, they’re so busy that they don’t respond to the customer. So the customer gets very frustrated, right? So whoever gets that first initial contact with the customer, they they’re not prepared how to handle it. And then it just gets shoved off or the customer gets more upset and then gets up and up and up right until you come to the manager. So what I do is I would go in and I would help the individual employees. So like the initial call, right? You train the employee how to handle the initial call. And then another problem they have is the response time. You know, everybody in the industry knows right that when everybody’s hot or it’s leaking or broken, they want to fix now. So that’s a situation that can be remedied very easily by training and helping to teach the individual employee how to handle that.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:58] Yeah, I find a lot of organizations rather than just communicate and tell the truth, they either ignore the situation and then, like, they’re too busy, so they don’t even bother because look, I’m too busy. I couldn’t get to them if I wanted to. Rather than just say, You know what, I can’t get to it for seven days and then someone will call you back or seven days, I’ll send a person. If you just tell me what’s going on, you have a chance of keeping my business. If you ignore me or just ghost me, then I’m not going to ever use you, and I’m going to talk bad about you.

Jammie Wong: [00:07:32] Exactly. And that is such a big problem. I mean, there is ways to save, for your example, right? It’s going to take somebody seven days to get there. You can still have somebody continually call the customer in case there was an opening. You know, just you can find ways to work things out, you know, communicate with the customer, but keep them in the loop no matter what. That is the biggest problem, I see.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:54] Yeah, it’s it’s so funny because it’s so hard to get new clients and people who are getting calls from people who want to do business with them. They just ignore it and take it for granted. And then at some point, business slows down. They’re like, Where what do I have to do to get new business? It’s like you had all this business and then you threw it away.

Jammie Wong: [00:08:14] Exactly right. So that’s also a good part, right? You can ask once you take care of the customer, you can ask them for referrals, right? You can post that on your website. You can post that on your social media. But all of that takes communication with the customer and making sure that your employee knows how to handle the customers in the right way.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:32] Now, do you find in your work that you’re really helping these leaders with their personal development to help them with their leadership skills and help them with their communication skills?

Jammie Wong: [00:08:42] Yes, because that’s the biggest part for anybody, right? Like John Maxwell. He has the law of the land, so you won’t be able to bring in anybody else whose lead is higher than you rate. So you have to continually grow your own lead as an employer so that you can help your employees grow. Also, because everything stops with the leader, it begins and ends with the leader. So if you as a leader are not growing and continually changing and looking for different ways where you can improve the situation in your company and the culture, then really your employees have no chance of growing either.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:16] So now for you in your entrepreneurial journey, what has been the most rewarding part for making this kind of shift from kind of being an employee to now leading your own firm?

Jammie Wong: [00:09:28] To me, the the biggest impact for me is that I really enjoy seeing the transformation in a different companies and the people that I’ve worked with and helped to see the different changes, to see the growth because I think with growth, there’s always more opportunity and you know, everybody can succeed, right? They just need to be trained and then you just need to make it more efficient and have everybody win.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:55] Now in your career, was there a mentor or a leader that really resonated with you that helped take you to a new level?

Jammie Wong: [00:10:02] So I am a colonel licensee and I started following him. I’d seen a couple to three years ago and he has a training program, which I utilize daily. And what it is is, you know, everybody thinks it’s just sales training, but I’ve come to find out it’s a lot more. It’s a personal development. But because of the things that he teaches, I’ve learned and I’ve grown right. So I’ve found other mentors like Brendan Dawson. So all of these different types of mentorships, they’ve helped me to grow, and that’s why I really want to help business owners see that they can also grow and that they can offer potential and opportunity for their employees.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:40] Now, if somebody wants to learn more about your practice, maybe get on your calendar. What is the best way to do that? Do you have a website or through LinkedIn or one of the social platforms?

Jammie Wong: [00:10:51] Sure, they can get a hold of me on my website. It’s at Hawaiian or I am also on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter at the real Jamie Wong. And then I also have at the real Jamie Wong website also so

Lee Kantor: [00:11:07] Well, congratulations on all the success you’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Jammie Wong: [00:11:13] Thanks, Lee. I appreciate the opportunity.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:15] All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Oahu Business Radio.